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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
ne man can do everything. There are a thousand rough-hewn brains which can well perform the plain work which American statesmanship now demands, without calling on the artist to cut blocks with his razor. His shrinking is not cowardice; this relief from glaring publicity is the natural condition under which works of art mature. The crystal forms by its own laws, and the granite by its own. Yet moments constantly occur to the American student, when he has to bind himself to the mast, like Farragut, to resist the dazzling temptations of paths alien to his own. What is art, what is beauty (he is tempted to say), beside the magnificent utilities of American life,--the work of distributing over a continent the varied treasures already gained? Why hold against the current, when even one's prospects of immediate usefulness lie with the current, and even conscience joins, half shrinking, to lure him from his plighted faith? In Europe art is a career, the greatest and most permanent career